


There's a Ghost in My Mouth

by nothingislittle



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Aftercare, Anal Sex, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst and Porn, Blow Jobs, Bruises, Comeplay, Control, Crying Sherlock, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Impact Play, Light BDSM, Light Bondage, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Mild Blood, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Orgasm Denial, POV First Person, POV John Watson, Painplay, Post-Season/Series 03, Sherlock Pain Kink, Smut, Under-negotiated Kink, semi dark john
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-24
Updated: 2015-02-24
Packaged: 2018-03-14 23:54:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3430256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nothingislittle/pseuds/nothingislittle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He wants me to believe that all of the people who have died mean nothing, that each one of them doesn’t dig under his skin like individual slivers of glass from his busted apart existence. I pretend I do, pretend I believe, look away and leave. But not now, I can’t now, because he needs it, to be held, and I need to hold."</p>
            </blockquote>





	There's a Ghost in My Mouth

**Author's Note:**

> Here are the songs I listened to while writing this. They make excellent background music for this fic:
> 
> Skinny Love - Birdy  
> Untouchable Face - Ani DiFranco  
> Let Her Go - Jasmine Thompson  
> And So It Goes - Billy Joel

He’s crying again. 

He’s always crying now. 

This time he’s crouched on the floor, hands clutched around his neck, so swollen and red, he looks as if he may explode. If I could kiss it away, I would. 

He wants me to believe that all of the people who have died mean nothing, that each one of them doesn’t dig under his skin like individual slivers of glass from his busted apart existence. I pretend I do, pretend I believe, look away and leave. But not now, I can’t now, because he needs it, to be held, and I need to hold. 

Kneeling behind, I rub at Sherlock’s shoulders, his hands where they clutch at his neck. 

“Hey, hey, it’s alright.” I’m cooing. 

“Not, it’s not, it’s _not_ okay, it’s—” he bites out, coughs and starts to choke on the broken words. I whisper shushing sounds into his ear, wrap arms around his shoulders and we rock as he sobs. 

“I’m here, I’m here.”

It’s supposed to be a comfort, yet he wails louder.

“Why, John, _why_?” he calls, drawing it out, moaning sobs. Slowly the moaning dies out and it hits me hard how close my mouth is to the skin by his ear, that I’m holding him so closely against me. I want him so much, to love, to comfort, to keep. 

His cries have faded to whimpers and I answer his question with a press of my dry lips to his hair, hear his breath stop. But he doesn’t pull away. I nuzzle his temple and can feel the question in the tension of his body.

“That’s why,” I say, breathing him in, my eyes closed. Because I can’t say it, can’t say _I’d never leave, no matter what,_ can’t say any of it, but this, this I can do. He sniffles once, leans back into me. 

Deep breaths. 

“Would … can I … ?”

I’m not even sure I’ve said it aloud it’s so quiet. He doesn’t move. I try again because I have to, I need to, everything is crying out for it, to be _us_ , broken, shattered, sweaty and wretched. Together. Tonight. 

“We can forget, spend a few hours like it never happened. I’ll take it away.” He thrashes against me a bit, whimpering, shaking his head. Doesn’t want to forget. That’s when I know. 

“Then I’ll take it on.”

He freezes.

“I’ll sit inside you with it. Let me share it, hold it for you. Please. Just. Let me.”

Leaning back, he meets my eyes, and I see broken blood vessels — cried so hard they’re bleeding into themselves. He’s destroyed and I see myself reflected in the wreckage. I want to swim around in the mess. I dive in, press our mouths together and we melt. 

Everything is salty. Death and blood and survival and tears. He won’t or can’t stop crying and I tell him it’s okay over and over. A litany of reassurance and it doesn’t reach. I put him up on the couch, peel buttons free from fabric as he shakes. The flesh revealed is so pearly, translucent white. As cloth falls away, I indulge myself, running fingers over the cartography of veins, almost like the first layer of skin is missing. They run everywhere like rivers and he’s white and blue and purple and impossibly delicate. 

“I feel like I might break you.”

“Too late.”

His eyes are hollow and resigned as he says it. The tears have stopped. I want to make him feel, feel something good and whole. I don’t know if he can, and I don’t know if I can. I cover the pulse point on his neck with my mouth and try. More salt. Sweat or tears, it blends and I don’t even know what I want any more but to stop the hurting, the ache, the widening gap between us and the world. Who can understand what we’ve done? Been through? All of that makes us belong only to each other at the same time that it keeps us separate, running from the comprehension reflected in each other. Closer than anyone else but still farther than the moon. I don’t want to be far any more. 

I straddle his hips and pour my mouth into his with no response until I bring both my hands up to his neck and clutch them a breath too tightly. 

There it is.

He moans, hands jerking up to my hips.

“This is it, then?” I mumble, against his lips. “This is what you want to feel?”

His fingers flex against my belt loop, bleeding eyes searching mine. I should be gentle. Sweet and slow. But that’s not how we fix each other. Finally he nods minutely, and his tongue ventures cautiously to lap at my bottom lip.

There is a demon lurking in the middle of me, sitting just behind my heart. He steps out now, squashes the thing and takes me over, branding one word inside my skull, on my brain: _take_.

Everything that happens after this is unpolished and unreigned and me without a hedge. It’s a horror and a monstrosity and desires an apology it will never hear. 

The first place I make him bleed is on the upper arms, below the shoulders on each side. Fingernails dig and pierce, scraping down and I drink the hiss he spits into my mouth. If the only way to make him feel something good is to hurt him, I am willing to ruin. I think this is what we always wanted, where we’ve always been coming to, with no idea how to get here. 

He’s mewling and sucking and biting at my mouth with his eyes held tightly shut. My belt slips easily from the loops once I’ve undone it and I stand.

“Hit me,” He blurts immediately upon opening his eyes, seeing the leather clutched in my fists. Not what I intended. 

“Hit you?”

“Yes. Didn’t you hear me?”

It’s familiar, a ghost of a conversation from another time and I taste the reply, swirling on my tongue, but this isn’t the same game. This is something new and tacky and dangerous and, as usual, Sherlock is prepared to play hard and fast, consequences damned. Had the evil thing inside me not squashed my heart I would still be the voice of reason. But reason is dead. I can tell he thinks I’m going to decline. 

“I say where.”

Eyes wide, dick hard, he nods. 

“Sherlock. Understand. If you need to, you _will_ tell me to stop.”

Again, he only nods. 

“No. Let me hear it.”

“In the event it becomes necessary for any reason, I will tell you to stop.”

“Put your arms above your head. ” He obeys, crossed at the wrist and I kick the coffee table away, making room to plant my feet widely. I fold the belt in half and tuck the metal into my closed hand. Emergency room visits are tedious. I’m rearing back, holding it over my head, when he says it. 

“I want bruises.”

I’m a doctor. I know how to bruise. 

The first hit across his chest cracks through the flat and sings and vibrates up my arm and spreads all over me. He’s silent, but his jaw works. I do it again, he huffs air out this time. The red marks are welting up, an ex over his heart. I hit him once more, across the abdomen, underlining it, and his answering groan is closed-mouthed and agony but I look and he’s harder still. Red and soon to be black and blue joins the white and purple and it’s pain and it’s beauty and his arms are still over his head. The realization seeps through me that he’s waiting for my permission to move despite the constellation of pain induced stars surely bursting behind his eyes. This level of control makes my mouth water. It feels like there is no blood left in my brain and I hear a chanting _take take take take_ somewhere. I listen. 

Hastily I press my left knee into the edge of the couch between his spread legs and yank my undone trousers and pants to mid thigh, clutching myself. It’s a flood. I pull myself, furiously, over and over. I have to see my come paint these bruises and welts, nothing else exists except that burning need and I can tell it’s the same for him, his jaw finally slack, staring me in the eye. 

I start to come, grunting, and the first stripe hits with a faint splat. Somehow it’s symphony in one noise, it’s art and truth, and the sounds that follow contribute the next movements. The head of my cock squelching as I drag it through the mess on his stomach and chest, Sherlock whining high, unbelievably young-sounding, at the pain, the growl ripping from the back of my throat as my orgasm draws out inexplicably, and his teeth grinding from the effort of keeping his arms above his head. 

Finally it passes and where I expect to feel groggy and spent, crumpled and used up, I feel bright, alert, powerful and everything is razor sharp. Sherlock’s arms are shaking, tired, his chest is mottled, angry and red next to eerie white, covered in mess, and arms bleeding weakly. Impossibly hard. I reach, and he shakes his head. The hollow is back in his eyes.

“No?”

“No.”

“You can put your arms down.”

He does. 

 

\--

 

In the bathroom, I clean him up. Betadine, warm soap and water, and bandages on his arms. His eyes are glassy and unfocused and I don’t know what’s next. He wanders into his room and lays down on the floor and I want to tell him he shouldn’t, that it’s filthy, that he’ll get dirty but I know that’s why.

I am evil. I sit on his bed and see the unmarred flesh of his back and I want to take another pound. He sees me looking.

“What.”

“I …”

“What do you want.” He’s asking questions but it doesn’t sound like it. It seems like he’s gone, like something is missing from him and it has for weeks. Months. It’s like he’s not there. But I saw him again. I did. When I hit him, when I painted him, when I kissed him. But then it was over and he’s left again.

“Where did you go?”

“What. Do. You. Want.”

“I want … I want to take more.”

He closes his eyes and nods, hair and cheek dragging against the dusty hard wood. We sit in silence and it stretches out over us, quiet and blue. I don’t know what time it is. I have places I’m supposed to be, I’m certain, but I don’t know where they are other than here. 

Sherlock’s pain is palpable in the silence and this all feels like a test. I said I’d sit with it and here we are. The longer we’re quiet, the more bitter and sour the air around me tastes. Tears are streaking his face, making a path through the dirt and I know so much of his pain is incidental but I know so much more of it is directly connected to me, to things I’ve done, I’ve said — to things I haven’t. And there’s nothing for it but for me to exist inside of it and it’s so visceral, I don’t know how but I can feel it all, what he’s done, what he’s been through. I fall to my hands and knees and like I’ve been punched in the gut I can barely breathe. Shuffling over to where he lays and I’m looming over him. Something happens to me when I get this close to him, and it crackles through me. _Touch him. Taste him. Have him._ Fingers on his dirty cheek, eyes fly open.

“There’s nothing I wouldn’t give you.”

Oh god. 

“That’s not the kind of permission you want to give me.”

He takes my hand and presses it into his chest, above his heart. The skin is warm and welted and the contact must hurt terribly, but still he presses. I feel the marked difference, the increase from my skin against his and soon his heartbeat is flying. 

“What else is there?”

I kiss him then because he’s right. He tastes like dust and despair and I have no idea where we’ll be at the end of this. Right now it feels frozen, like these moments exist outside of time, so I lean into that and refuse to wonder about befores and afters. I want to make him come but he won’t let me near his prick. He’s streaked with dirt along his entire right side, brown and gray joining the rainbow of bruises on the white canvas and I want to clean him again. I want to take but there are also things I want to give. Maybe I’ll get the chance but I can see it in his eyes and face and broken body that he wants to be made dirty, smeared and filthy. Tonight that’s how we’ll cleanse each other. 

 

\--

 

I fuck him right there on the floor. 

My belt is looped around his neck and I tug at it, arching his back. There will be, I hope, a ligature mark I can run my tongue against. 

Sherlock is not quiet, here, like this. I didn’t expect him to be and it’s a rare thing when he doesn’t meet or exceed my imagination. The mewling cries and guttural howls while I stretched him open with my fingers and my tongue are burned into my ear drums. His arms and legs quaked with the effort of holding himself off the floor. Hands and knees. His cock hung heavy but still, he batted me away when I reached. I don’t know what he’s playing at, there, but I have a grossly masculine desire to bring him off while I pound into him, as I am now.  
He doesn’t know this but I can last. Almost limitlessly. And here he is, knelt before me, stretched where I want, taut where I want, soft, pliable, wet and open where I want. And he’ll stay that way for as long as I want. I tell him as much and he sobs. Cock leaks. The only time he says ‘no’ is when I ask if he wants to stop. I pull out occasionally and fuck myself on the crack of his arse. That’s when we growls and pushes back, searching to be filled. I oblige when it suits. 

Eventually I yank him up by the belt, his back to my chest, drop the strap and make fists in his hair. It seems like it’s been hours. His cock looks angry, tortured, completely ignored and I don’t understand. 

“What are you waiting for, Sherlock?” I ask against his ear, while I thrust into him, not fast, but _hard_. His eyes are closed.

“What is it? I can take this from you if I want to.”

He shakes his head. Leans back and kisses my cheek, gently, soft. I could cry.

“Please don’t.” He whispers. 

Releasing his hair, I rake my fingernails up his chest, through his bruises, and his answering wail pulls me over the edge where I have lived.

“Whatever you want,” I huff as my thrusting through slickness slows. “Whatever you want.”

 

\--

 

We stay like this for two days. It feels like we’re dying. 

I hurt him, I fuck him, I clean him, we sit in silence apart until my skin burns. And then I take him again. Sherlock doesn’t come once. And he won’t talk. 

In the silence I try to work it out, but I’m not the detective. It’s clearly a punishment, a penance but I don’t see the connection. I don’t know and I can’t tell and soon there’s no food in the flat. 

“This isn’t sustainable.”

It’s half past midnight and we’re lying naked on his bed, side to side, staring at the shapes the moon casts on the ceiling. He smokes. Prick at attention — it doesn’t soften now, between rounds. I want to wrap my mouth around it. 

“No,” is his only answer. Finishing one cigarette, he lights another. 

“I want to fuck you again.”

“I know.”

Sherlock’s body is a map of bruises in varying states of decay. Yellow and brown, purple and red. Scabbed wounds on his arms from my nails. Bruises on every expanse of flesh, chest, back, thighs, arse. I cannot tell him how beautiful it is. But I settle over him to taste every contusion I can reach and I think he knows. 

Afterward, he sleeps and I order takeaway and decide this doesn’t end until I have Sherlock’s come in my belly. 

 

\--

 

I wake him up with my mouth. Slowly. There isn’t a spot on him that my tongue doesn’t touch. By the time I reach his lower abdomen he’s crying. I nuzzle at the nest of hair between his legs, inhaling him. He smells like sleep and sex. His head thrashes. 

“Shh, shh,” I whisper into his skin. Try to inch close to his cock. 

“No, no, no.”

He doesn’t reach for me like before. He doesn’t push me away, bat at me. Instead his hands fist in the white sheets and pre-cum drips steadily, while he shakes his head, eyes closed. 

“Sherlock.” I’m whispering, calling to him. “Look at me, Sherlock. Shhhh, look.”

He refuses, crying, still crying, always crying. I can’t explain it, but I understand it, now. He’s punished himself, and me, at the same time as we’ve healed each other, these past two days, but we’re done now. This is the end. The bruises and cuts speak for themselves: I’ve faced myself and so has he. Now is the time to soothe. To give. 

He still won’t look at me. 

“Sherlock. You don’t have to do this anymore.” I lap at this inner thighs. “It’s over. It’s over.” Still, he shakes his head. 

“Let me take it away now.”

His eyes open and he looks down at me, tear soaked. When I rub my cheek up and down his length he gasps, dryly, but doesn’t say stop. Sweetness is back. I have conquered the monster that lives in my chest and beat him back to cower behind my heart: for now. I suck Sherlock off so slowly, gently, that even though he’s been on the verge for nearly 60 hours, he still lasts a few minutes. It is exquisite. He’s long and thin and silken and delicious. I don’t worry about breathing. Breathing … _breathing is boring_. 

Eventually my pace becomes unbearable and when he secures a grip on my hair and thrusts up into my throat, gagging me, my entire body feels like it’s floating. If my mouth weren’t full, I would beg _please please, more_ and he must deduce it because he is rough and relentless and I hollow my cheeks, dipping my hand between his legs to pull at his bollocks and flutter over his entrance. He hammers into my mouth, sobbing, mumbling my name and things in other languages I don’t understand until finally he comes. There’s no way I can swallow it all, but I do, greedily, and when he’s limp and still beneath me, I continue to lick and suckle until I have it all and he’s clean and he whimpers but doesn’t push me away. 

I wipe the tears from his cheeks, straddle his face and fuck his mouth with his hair in my hands — because the demon isn’t conquered for long. He smiles when I come. 

 

\--

 

“What will happen next?”

“I’m a detective, John, not a clairvoyant.”

It’s impossible. I try not to stare. This is the first semblance of Sherlock I have seen since — I can’t find a starting point. 

Where will we go from here? What does it all mean? 

Anywhere? 

Anything? 

I don’t know. But he’s not crying anymore.  

**Author's Note:**

> Getting back on the horse. Title from an Ani DiFranco song, and all thanks for that to my Katie, without whom I would never have heard it.
> 
> Comments are the glue that keeps all this together and I love them, so please share your thoughts with me!


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